


Parigata

by avani



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-12 00:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13535865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: Four things that never happened to Bhadra.





	Parigata

**Author's Note:**

> Parigata- (Sanskrit), deceased, forgotten, afflicted with. 
> 
> Like Śaktiviṣaya (though not connected to that series of fics) this is a collection of AUs, with a different one in each section.

**1** .

Mother never comes with them to see the prisoner. She will see Father and Bhadra off, a frown across her face, but her footsteps falter at the threshold of her apartments. Her balcony overlooks the Shiva temple; it is always kept locked. Bhadra has never heard the prisoner’s name cross her lips. Only from Father does he learn she was once known as Devasena. 

“Women,” clucks Bhadra’s grandfather. “A man can never keep two of them peacefully under the same roof, even when one is in chains.”

Bhadra makes the mistake of mentioning her to Mother only once. “And then old Kattappa whinged on about how we were treating the whore until Father had to order him to stop--”

Mother stops short. “Your father teaches you to use such language?”

“No!” Bhadra looks at her, incredulous. Does she think him so incapable of understanding Father’s clear instructions? “That’s only meant for ad-adulterers,” (a new word, a difficult one, and one that made Father laugh with pride when he said it), “not decent people. I know  _ that _ .”

Mother stays silent but later that night he hears her arguing with Father. They do not argue very long. They do not argue again. In the morning, Father speaks of the prisoner as he always does, and Mother, eyelids swollen from weeping and lips still pursed, looks away. 

Mother takes him to see the stars instead. It is her favorite thing to do. She shows him Arundhati and the Seven Sages where they live in the sky, and then she guides his finger downwards to point to Dhruva, the Pole-star. 

Dhruva was cast aside by his father in favor of his brother. From his father and grandfather, Bhadra knows what a terrible thing that is. He is grateful he has no brothers who should pose such a threat. 

But Dhruva did nothing in retaliation, Mother says. “He trusted to the Almighty to judge between them. He did not take justice into his own hands.” She looks past Bhadra, past the palace below, past Mahishmati itself. “And so those who follow his path will always find justice for themselves in turn.”

She says this last only once, on the last time she takes him to see the stars. Bhadra remembers, because the next night, when he tries to find her, she is gone. She is not the only one. In the courtyard before the Shiva temple, the cage door is unlocked, the chains empty.

“Faithless woman!” Grandfather spits disgustedly, and Father sits on his throne and simmers in his rage and says nothing. Bhadra sits at his feet, careful not to anger him further.

“Bhadra,” Grandfather asks once, cajoling. “Do you know where they might have gone? Did your mother mention anything of the sort to you?” Bhadra can only reply that she had said nothing of the sort. “Humph,” says Grandfather, and slinks away; he does not ask again. 

The years pass. In the absence of any prisoner to go see, Father and Grandfather have little use for Bhadra. Bhadra makes his peace with this and goes up to chart the stars instead. He likes the silence: a sharp contrast from Father’s court. But even that cannot suffice entirely, and Bhadra finds himself wanting more. 

_Those who follow in Dhruva’s path_ _will always find justice_ , Mother had told him once, and, lonely and lost, Bhadra thinks that might be a fine thing to discover. And--it would be something to see Mother again, if that had been what she had really meant. He might be wrong--he likely is--but _justice_ seems a fine thing for Mother to have sought out, particularly in the company of a prisoner.

He saddles his horse and rides north. 

**2** .

The day comes when Bhadra tires of throwing sticks at the madwoman in her cage. He pushes his face up against the bars and sticks out his tongue, and when even that grows boring, asks: “Why are you here?”

He does not expect an answer, not really; in all his six years, the madwoman has never replied to anything anyone has said to her. But to his surprise, there comes a dry chuckle and a faint whisper: “Because your father keeps me here.”

“Oh,” says Bhadra. “What do you do all day?”

She frowns with concentration for a long moment before she finally speaks. No one has ever given such consideration to any of Bhadra’s questions before. “Watch those around me. Plan my revenge. Curse my fate.”

That sounds every bit as boring as throwing sticks. “Don’t you ever want to leave?”

The madwoman bares her teeth. “Not,” she snarls, “until my son takes me away.”

He hadn’t known the madwoman had a son. He wonders if the son is mad, too--and how exciting might that be, if true? He sits down beside the cage and asks her to tell him more about her child.

She comes closer, hesitantly, with a clank of chains. “A few years older than you,” she whispers. Her gaze is distant and unfocused; it makes Bhadra uneasy. “Strong, I think, and kind and clever, I hope. He has his father’s features….” Her voice trails off, heavy with more grief than Bhadra has ever heard before. He finds he does not like it. 

“I don’t care about that,” he says imperiously. “Is he mad too?”

To his relief, the madwoman’s eyes fix on his face once more. The corners of her lips turn upwards. “No more so than you might expect, with me for a mother.”

A disappointment, but Bhadra thinks he can make do. 

“My tutor will be expecting me,” he announces, as he rises to stand once more. “I must go. But I will return tomorrow, and you will tell me more about your son.”

The madwoman only appears amused. She does not nod in obedience, as she ought to, but neither does she seem surprised to see him the next morning. He sits down on the other side of the bars, and she tells him how her son would have learned to walk: hesitantly at first, then less awkwardly, then in such a rush to reach his destination that he would stumble.

Bhadra laughs, because she is clumsy, too, with her chains.  _ Like mother, like son _ , he thinks, and then, because it is clever, repeats this aloud.

The madwoman’s face stills. “I never considered that he might be like me,” she whispers at last. “I pray he is not.” Her fists clench. 

Her eyes look past him again. Bhadra bites back sudden irritation. She is here, with him: he deserves her notice, more than some shadowy son who might or might not exist. He should demand her attention, order her to mind him--he does not.

Instead he offers, never certain why: “I am not like my mother, except in my looks.”

“I am sorry for her loss,” says the madwoman, very kindly. For an instant, she sounds so like Mother that it makes Bhadra’s throat close up in panic: has it really been so long since he heard Mother’s voice that even that of a convict in a cage would so resemble hers?

“Father says she was a disappointment,” Bhadra admits--a shameful secret he has never before confessed. But who else can the madwoman tell from her cage? “And that I must not be.”

“Your father,” says the madwoman, her voice is stronger than Bhadra has ever heard it, “is a fool.”

Bhadra stares at her, shocked and guilty, and stands up. “I should go,” he stammers, and later, to atone for his wickedness in betraying Father, he forces himself to practice his sword fighting exercises until sundown. 

But he goes back to visit the madwoman the next day, and the next, and the next, until he knows her stories of her brilliant brave husband and her beautiful brutalized homeland as he does his own lineage. On dark nights, when she cries, he sits beside her in silence. He brings her balm for her wrists and what little food he can smuggle from the kitchens. 

She listens, too, when he tells her about his unease with the things Grandfather says, when he admits his fear that he’ll never be half the warrior Father is, when he nervously recites the poems he composes but dares not share with anyone else. In her faint voice, she teaches him of the way of righteousness and how his grandfather violates it, shows him small tricks to wield his weapons with greater ease, showers him with praise for the words he crafts. 

Bhadra knows little about his mother, not enough to know if she was much like the madwoman. He might have liked it if she were.

He’s fifteen when he finds her in the middle of the night. “No,” she tells him patiently, as she has every other time he brought up the possibility of escape. “I will not leave Mahishmati until my son takes me away.”

He is prepared for this; after years of pondering the subject, he knows the way to overcome her impossible condition, her irrational loyalty to a baby drowned at birth. Gently, he takes her hands through the bars of her cage.

“Am I not,” he asks gently, “your son, too?”

Slowly, she squeezes his hand. Slowly, she nods her assent. 

**3.**

“I surrender,” Bhadra forces out, the words like poison--would that they were!--on his tongue. But better to survive and defeat this barbarian who’s carried off the old whore another day instead of meet certain death, and besides, old Kattappa will rescue him.

Except Kattappa--traitorous scum!--does not. Kattappa falls at the feet of this forest savage, placing his head under the man’s muddy toes, and wails that phrase that upset Father so: “Baahubali!” 

His head will roll when Father hears of this. For now, all Bhadra can do is glare at him, willing him to recall where his loyalty lies.

Kattappa doesn’t, of course: what more can be expected of a dog? The next few minutes are nothing but confusion, as first the notorious Kuntalan rebels and then a battalion of villagers descend upon the scene, and must have the entire situation explained to them from the start.

The peasant—Baahubali? — is the first to remember Bhadra’s existence. “What are we to do with him?”

To Bhadra’s surprise, everyone looks to the crone. Bhadra thinks he could think of better people to take direction from than a sundazed, stubborn witch of a woman, but when she rasps something he can’t hear, they all bow their heads in agreement. They must all be as mad as she is.

They tie his hands behind his back and once they reach the formation of rocks that is their destination, force him to his knees. This humiliation would be bad enough, but then to add insult to injury, Kattappa launches into a incoherent story all about the greatness of the elder Baahubali. And such things he claims! Since he was small, Bhadra has known that the woman in the cage was once promised to his father before she betrayed him for another, and that Father had no choice but to kill her lover and imprison her to protect his honor. But now, for Kattappa to declare she was lawfully married to his father’s brother, that Father never had any claim on her, that she is his  _ aunt _ \--

It is not true, it cannot be, and so a snort of suppressed laughter escapes him once it has finally come to an end.

Baahubali-the-younger-but-no-less-idiotic reaches for his sword once again. 

“Please,” Bhadra manages, not without some effort, “Pray don’t tell me you believe all that nonsense blindly.”

“My grandfather--” and here Kattappa’s eyes well, sentimental sot that he is, “--is not in the habit of lying.”

He says this with such confidence, as though  _ he _ , not Bhadra, were the one to whom the dog had answered for almost two decades. And why shouldn’t he? Kattappa has certainly forgotten to whom his fealty is due. 

“Perhaps not. But the facts might appear quite different were it my grandfather who had the telling of it.”

Baahubali snarls and advances, and for an instant, Bhadra fears he really will kill him. But he contents himself with cuffing the bound Bhadra about the head, coward that he is. As Bhadra blinks miserably up at him from the ground, he hears:

“There is no honor in harming an enemy who is helpless.”

The crone’s voice is soft and strangled as ever, but it sends Baahubali shuffling back. Sullenly, he mutters, “No less than what he did to you.”

And that--was different. Completely different. The whore has to be punished, to see the error of her sins and her stubbornness, for her own good. That is what Father and Grandfather always say, and Bhadra does not doubt them. He cannot doubt them, because Kattappa might be disloyal, but Bhadra never will be. 

“Spare me your concern,” he snaps. “My father will come for me, and when he does--”

“Will he?” says the crone. “If he can have only of us returned to him, tell me, Bhadra, who shall he choose?” Her voice is as soft as ever, and it burns in his ears like fire. Bhadra closes his eyes.

“Me,” he says desperately. “Me. I am his son--he loves me--he wishes me safe--”

“Then tomorrow when we face him in battle, you shall walk before our army,” she says, “and have nothing to fear.”

Her face is flat with mockery, and Bhadra ignores this. She means to turn him from his father’s side, treacherous as she is, as all women are, and he will not listen to her. No greater hurt to his father than to lose his son, whether by death or deceit.

He forces himself to keep his head high, even when Baahubali pushes him out onto the battlefield to walk beside his mother, even when the glint of light against Father’s telescope lets him know that he must have been recognized. 

_ Father loves me, he will save me, he will choose  _ me _ - _ -

Still. When Father’s chariot speeds towards him, blades spinning, Bhadra is not altogether surprised. What is a surprise is a body throwing itself towards him, knocking him out of danger’s way. 

The crone--his aunt, Queen Devasena, is stronger than she should be after years of captivity, and kinder, too: she pointedly ignores the tears that burn in his eyes, the undignified snuffles he cannot conceal.

“I will fight for you,” he struggles to say, anger rapidly replacing hurt. “Let me fight for you.” 

Her answering smile is bright with triumph. 

**4.**

“Mahendra!” 

No response. Undeterred, Bhadra hisses again:

“Mahendra!”

At last his cousin admits defeat and turns to regard him with a withering gaze. One of the disadvantages of Mahendra being nearly twice his age is that, now in his teenage years, Mahendra has become far less eager to play with Bhadra as he used to, giving all his interest to  _ girls _ instead.

And there’s one here, too, across the stables, who Mahendra has been spending all this time studying in silence. This isn’t at all like Mahendra. Fortunately for him, Bhadra’s come to save him—

“Go away, Bhadra,” Mahendra growls, going back to staring at the girl as though eyeing a wild elephant.

Well. So much for that. “You have to mind me this morning,” Bhadra announces. “Aunt Devasena said so.”

Mahendra sighs but does not argue with his mother’s command, even in her absence. He never does. He doesn’t move to go anywhere else, though, which is disappointing.

So Bhadra asks, “Who is she?”

“No one,” Mahendra says at once. 

“It’s a long time to watch her if she’s no one.”

“Hush.”

Bhadra means to be patient, but in seconds, his resolution is overcome by boredom. Maybe if Mahendra actually talks to The Girl, he’ll be happy and spend time with Bhadra instead, as he ought to. Besides, Mahendra is Bhadra’s favorite cousin: his only cousin, true, but his favorite nonetheless. 

“I’m going to say ‘hello,’” Bhadra says, and even Mahendra’s strangled yelp of: “Bhadra! No!” does not stop him. 

The Girl looks up from her horse as he approaches, Mahendra scrambling afterwards. She offers no greeting, only arches an eyebrow. 

“My name is Bhadra,” says Bhadra and points. “That’s my cousin Mahendra.”

“As he’s the prince of the country,” says The Girl, without bothering to look up, “it would be next to impossible for me to remain ignorant of that.”

She’s funny. Bhadra likes that. “He wants to come talk to you, too. He’s just too shy.” She does send a sharp glance in Mahendra’s direction at that, and Bhadra, encouraged, goes on: “He’s really not as stupid as he looks, I promise, it’s only that he was dropped on his head as a baby, and the physicians all think it’s too late, the damage is permanent--”

The Girl starts to laugh. Mahendra turns red. He lunges for Bhadra, but Bhadra, expecting this, dashes just out of reach. There. Just as he had expected, now that the problem of the Girl has been solved, Mahendra is neglecting him no longer. There remains only the minor problem of making sure Mahendra doesn’t murder him out of sheer rage. 

Bhadra throws himself up a set of stairs, peering behind to see if Mahendra has found him yet. This is why he doesn’t notice Aunt Devasena until she puts his hands on his shoulders to keep him from running into her. The shock of it is enough to set him off balance, almost falling down the steps if she hadn’t had a firm grip on him. He isn’t frightened, though; he need not fear anything when Aunt Devasena is around.

“Bhadra you nitwit I swear I’ll--” Mahendra comes to an abrupt stop. “Oh, hello, Mother.”

“Mahendra.” Aunt Devasena looks from him to Bhadra curiously. “What are you two doing?”

Mahendra hangs his head. “I know you told me to mind Bhadra for you, Mother, but he was being so infuriating, and I--”

Bhadra looks guiltily at Aunt Devasena. She sighs.

“I suppose it’s something in the bloodline,” she mutters to herself. “If you two must duel to the death, at least do it in the training yards when Kattappa can watch over you.”

“Of course, Mother,” says Mahendra, and makes a hasty retreat. 

Bhadra makes to follow, but before he goes, he calls over his shoulder: “Thank you, Aunt Devasena!” He owes her, after all, for catching him, for keeping him safe, for not telling Mahendra that in fact it had been his nurse with whom Bhadra had been meant to spend to the morning. But who, after all, wanted to spend time with Anjani-ma when they could be with Mahendra instead?

Aunt Devasena chokes back a silent laugh and waves him onwards. Bhadra blows her a kiss and scurries forward to catch up with his cousin.

The day is young, Mahendra is with him, and he wants for nothing. 

**Author's Note:**

> *The identity of Bhalla's mother in #1 is intentionally kept ambiguous; whether you want to imagine her as fandom favorite Indira, biding her time until she is able to rescue her cousin, or you want to add any other Mrs Bhalla, who saves Devasena simply out of a sense of justice, both interpretations should work!
> 
> *The alternate sequence of events that Bhadra poses - i.e., him not knowing Devasena is his aunt, but only that she was someone who'd betrayed his father to love another - is honestly the only way his treatment of her makes sense to me, particularly since he canonically has no idea who Baahubali is. His behavior with a suffering, helpless woman is reprehensible, no matter who she is, but I suspect Bhadra would be far more uneasy with his father's actions if he knew all the facts. 
> 
> *The final section is set in any universe where Bhadra and Mahendra survive to know each other. In my mind, The Girl is of course Avantika--but I'm quite sure Bhadra is happy to spoil any attempts by his cousin at romance, no matter who the lucky girl is.


End file.
